ooh a rumor to spread

Hot Blog Rumor: Maybe One of Those Huntsman Boys Gabbed To Harry Reid About Romney’s Taxes

The Internet is rapidly zeroing in on the identity of Harry Reid’s source, the one who was like “oh yeah Harry, that guy, Romney, no taxes from that guy,” which Harry Reid reiterated on the Senate floor, destroying any semblance of what had previously been a sense of good faith and comity between the two parties in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. After a couple of weeks, Kos and Cannonfire nosed around a bit and found themselves with a lead: Oh, duh, it’s probably someone from the other rich Mormon political family that owns the other half of Utah, the Huntsmans — Jon Jr. and pop Jon Sr. They’re not the first to surmise that Reid’s source came from within powerful Mormon circles, where secrets do not appear to be safely kept. But they are the first to google around for a few more nuggets of circumstantial evidence and crap it out into a blog post, because why not?

The Huntsmans are hella Morm, of course. As in they’re bigwigs in the church hierarchy; no clue if they’re into the actual Jesus-in-Missouri hoopla.

Huntsman Sr. is business partners with Robert C. Gay (“business partners”), who was Bain’s managing director from 1998 to 2004 and perhaps knows the secrets.

It’s unclear if the Huntsmans have invested in Bain, but Bain has invested heavily in Huntsman Sr.’s multibillion dollar Big Mac container corporation. Bain has also been considering buying Huntsman’s company in classic private equity incubus style, and maybe that makes the Huntsmans sad.

While Huntsman Sr. supports Romney’s campaign now — Huntsman Jr. is basically checked out at this point — it’s quite possible that there’s residual anger from the primary season, since every campaign that’s run against Mitt Romney has gone on to despise him deeply as a person.

McKay Coppins, the Mormon guy at Buzzfeed who is MAYBE ALSO THE REID SOURCE? (BECAUSE HE IS MORMON AND… OTHER STUFF?), called up some other Mormon politics guy to ask him about the rumors. (And, *sigh*, He engages in vulgar hate speech against bloggers to make his point. As though we marched all those years for nothing. We have theories about Big Foot and crop circles and space ships? Dude, we don’t want to “get into it,” but try googling your religion):

Chuck Warren, a Salt Lake Republican strategist who endorsed Romney in the primary and has fundraised for the younger Huntsman’s gubernatorial bid, dismissed the speculation as “ridiculous.”

“I mean, people who believe this are the same people who espouse a theory that Big Foot is making crop circles with his space ship,” said Warren, whose firm is Silver Bullet. “Besides the obvious fact that Mr. Huntsman is not Gov. Romney’s accountant… he is simply a more honorable man than that. He doesn’t work in the shadows, and because you donate $9,600 to someone, probably less than .0001% of what Harry Reid collected that cycle, doesn’t make them BFFs.”

Another Utah powerbroker who endorsed Huntsman in the primaries was similarly incredulous.

“Personally I would REALLY doubt [Huntsman Sr.] is behind this — Harry has tons of other dubious source possibility,” the source e-mailed. “And [Huntsman Sr.] is behind Mitt now, too.”

Beverly Hills surgeon explains at home fix for crepey skin around the arms, legs, and stomach.

Gross. And now Huntsman Sr. himself has chimed in at Greg Sargent’s blog, saying he’s not the source (he would say that), but, in any event, Mitt Romney should release more tax returns:

But I just got off the phone with Huntsman, and he confirmed to me that he is not Reid’s source.

However, in a move that could be significant, Huntsman forcefully called on Romney to release his tax returns. This matters, because Huntsman is a longtime backer of Romney — he has long been close to Romney; he supported his early campaigns; he was the national finance chairman of Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign; and he has raised a lot of money for him over the years. (He backed his own son in the latest GOP primary.)

“I feel very badly that Mitt won’t release his taxes and won’t be fair with the American people,” Huntsman told me. In a reference to Romney’s father, who pioneered the release of returns as a presidential candidate, Huntsman said: “I loved George. He always said, pay your taxes for at least 10 or 12 years.”

“Mr. Romney ought to square with the American people and release his taxes like any other candidate,” Huntsman said. “I’ve supported Mitt all along. I wish him well. But I do think he should release his income taxes.”

All very interesting. But for now, we’ll go back to thinking the source was Chuck Schumer in a bad cowboy voice.

Jim Newell is Wonkette's beloved Capitol Hill Typing Demon. He joined Wonkette.com in 2007, left for some other dumb job in 2010, and proudly returned in 2012 as our "Senior Editor at Large." He lives in Washington and also writes for things such as The Guardian, the Manchester paper of liberals.

The source appears to be a high profile Mormon who knows a lot and can't stand Mitt Romney – it's Ken Jennings isn't it?

tihond

It would make Jennings even more dreamy.

HistoriCat

Isn't "can't stand Mitt Romney" pretty much pointless in narrowing this down? Who the hell can stand Romney?

SorosBot

Certainly not his dog.

Callyson

I love the smell of Republican infighting in the morning…or any other time…

SheriffRoscoe

My bet's on G. Gordon Liddy. He's a moron, right?

zippy_w_pinhead

Liddy is a classic example of what is wrong with tea bagger selective outrage. While they wail and moan about fast and furious, none of them seems to remember Liddy's famous radio comments about shooting ATF agents in the head, since they would be wearing Kevlar jackets

DaveJ

"He always said, pay your taxes for at least 10 or 12 years."

Ah ha, because….er…what, ok now, what the hell does that even mean?

IncenseDebate

Is he hinting that someone did NOT pay taxes for 10 or 12 years????

1stNewtontheMoon

that is such a weird and otherwise non sequitur quote.

bobbert

People do, sometimes, misspeak. Or maybe he just has an old-guy weird sense of humor (not that I'd know anything about that).

This rumor will end up where all those deflated balloons go. And speaking of sad sacks: I'm still waitin to hear what dark secret of Newty-Grinch's we were taunted in these same pages about, that Nancy Pelosi alluded to but wouldn't spill outright?

1stNewtontheMoon

she didn't need to because newt's lead in the polls lasted about the same length of time as his marriages. no need for a cocktober surprise when your campaign fails before cocktober.

bobbert

Newt's still breathing. Nancy has a number of faults, but wasting ammo ain't one.

SexySmurf

Huntsman Sr. is business partners with Robert C. Gay (“business partners”), who was Bain’s managing director from 1998 to 2004 and perhaps knows the secrets.

So the Gays did it! I knew it!

OneYieldRegular

I was going to say: if Romney was a Democrat, the FOX headline would be "Director of Bain Capital was Gay!"

As someone has pointed out, one of the reasons that Romney doesn't want to turn over his tax records is not because he runs a child prostitution ring out of Mexico (that is a plus in Republican circles, you can just hear Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter saying "Finally, we are getting something back from those illegals that have taken all our best fruit picking jobs!"), but because he doesn't want the church to know how much he has made, and that he hasn't properly tithed.

Don't under estimate that the Church may not be happy with Mr. Romney keeping all his money for himself and his horse.

mavenmaven

I was hoping you'd at least leave up pics of the Huntsman girls, as our weekend fapping pic (and not Mema again).

Tundra Grifter

The Joseph Smith Code.

rickmaci

Bring'em Young.

Tundra Grifter

Bring'em Young. Treat 'em Rough. Teach 'em to Dance.

elburritodeluxe

Isn't it clear to everyone that Reid makes shit like this up? Because he's fucking crazy?

widestanceromance

I am nourished by thoughts Willard will be undone by his own.*

*some may have noticed I always refer to him as 'Willard' and not his last name or his porn name of 'Mittens.' I think Willard should not be allowed to dodge his own name. He gets to dodge everything else, after all.

elburritodeluxe

When Republican politicians or pundits say crazy shit like this the get a pass in the lamestream media because – hey they're Republicans! It would be Liberal media bias to point out that they're full of shit. Besides, Republicans aren't very smart, and they speak for the folks from the not very smart Heartlands. So give them a break!

But when a Democrat says something dumb, holy shit, why is he degrading this nation's political discourse!

Huntsman's just about the only Mormon Republican anybody knows about — whereas I have no idea who else the guys are in the Bain Capital picture with all the dollar bills stuffed in their suits. Either way, I'm betting it was a rich white male.

Did Rafalca lose yet? That could be another tax deduction, you know. Not that he needs it, apparently.

Steverino247

It was a one-armed man. Unfortunately, we have a lot of them now thanks to that stupid bastard, W, sending them to Iraq for no fucking reason.

Tundra Grifter

On a somewhat more serious note, especially for a Friday afternoon, can't you just hear the cheers in every VA hospital in America for Oscar Pistorius?

Best thing to come out of South Africa since Nelson Mandela. And Charlize Theron. Also.

Steverino247

I was able to speak to some of them personally last weekend and they were very pleased. I've seen a number of men with similar prosthetics (and beyond) at Walter Reed and various VA facilities since 2004. Very inspirational, all of them.

bobbert

Somebody twatted him a question about whether he had more than one set of legs, and he replied (1) walking, (2) sprinting, (3) party.

Tundra Grifter

I remember when Paul Newman played Earl Long and he liked to wear cowboy boots to bed for the traction. Maybe those "party legs" are really short – but with plenty of spring.

Garbling what George Romney said about candidates releasing 10-12 years' worth of tax returns would indicate that Huntsman Sr. is senile. He's probably the source but just forgot about the whole thing.

NYNYNYjr

After saying Rom should release his returns Huntsman also said: “I loved George [Romney]. He always said, pay your taxes for at least 10 or 12 years.”

What a humanitarian– you should pay your taxes for at least 10 years before doing the rich-person hide all your money thing. Then you can safely release your returns when running for president.

High atop the Mother Church in downtown Salt Lake, Gideon is poised, trumpet to his lips, waiting for a halfway decent back beat to lay down some smoking tracks at the second coming of J. Christ. Tax this, mofo.